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IN RETAIL Steel
POINT OF VIEW “We don’t build buildings. We sell merchandise and use buildings to do that. If you are going to understand us as an owner of buildings, you have to shed the idea of the core function of a building. For us, it’s selling merchandise. That shift completely changed the way I looked at buildings as an architect.”
Crate & Barrel. A company that began with a dream, one employee, and no cash register. Today, the company has 7,500 employees and 60 stores in markets across the U.S. John Moebes, AIA, NCARB is one of them. Architect, contractor, he saw an opportunity open up with Crate & Barrel and hasn’t looked back since. As Director of Construction for the company, he offers a unique point of view about his world.
BUILDING OWNER Crate & Barrel STRUCTURAL ENGINEER Moore Lindner Engineering, Inc. FABRICATOR SteelFab, Inc.
ECONOMICS. “An architect or engineer typically has a brief relationship with a building – maybe 2% of its lifespan? How does ‘economic performance’ fit that involvement? What I learned is that the 2% can have a huge economic performance impact that’s not always positive for the business. Architects believe the building will be there forever. That can lead to incorrect decisions from the business point of view.” LIFE CYCLE “If you looked to an architect or engineer and say, well, think of what you are doing in relation to lasting only 15 years, they would feel concerned. They are not trained to think of a building as a short-term commodity. However, we may not be able to stay in the building. What if the market shifts? For us to be paying for a 50 or 100 year building would be a disaster. This kind of thinking impacts decisions we make with structures.” STEEL “Steel matches our core business philosophy. It is the industry standard in retail for many reasons. It’s the fastest material to erect; it’s always cost competitive. A school opening early doesn’t mean much to the bottom line. But a retail store? Steel is at the top of the list for speed to market.” FORGIVENESS “Steel is like my grandmother: it is always forgiving. You can fix steel; you can subtract and add in a way you cannot with other materials. There is no construction formula for our stores as in some retailers. At one point – pretty far along on this one building – we saw it was wrong. You don’t want fifteen years of regret behind you. We made a decision to change it. With steel, you can do that, there is no penalty to make such changes.” STRATEGY “We don’t have prototypes; our buildings are unique because of our real estate deals. We want to be in the best markets, which could be urban, suburban, maybe a historic building in New York, a lifestyle center in Charlotte. When I put together the strategy for a store, I would initially look for local experience. Steel changed that. We have developed an extremely effective relationship with a structural engineer and fabricator. For us, it is more cost effective to ship steel and have them travel to our sites than using local resources.” Circle no. 5 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
COLLABORATION “It’s complicated. There are certain mind sets in the industry practices that don’t benefit an owner. For example, the industry says there shouldn’t be direct collaboration with fabricator and structural engineer. It’s a kind of chain of command that we grew up with. Now we call them roadblocks. We go around them. Whether or not you believe it, the world is flat; there is a leveling of how people work and without collaboration, you always pay more. FABRICATORS “A general contractor selected SteelFab on one project when we were building a tough structure. It was overly complicated from a construction perspective. SteelFab hurried to show us how we could save money in the future. That was a magic moment. Over the next year and a half, they were awarded two more stores, under two different contractors. We soon realized they were working together throughout the U.S. STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS “SteelFab introduced us to Moore Lindner Engineering. It was another magic moment, because Moore Lindner understood we wanted a relationship – not just a dialog going back and forth. You have to find people who want to talk to each other. We are fortunate.” CORE VALUES “We have to have a building that is adaptable. Our deals are all different. From a branding perspective, we don’t see our brand as static. We sell change; we bring in new product every year. Our floors shift continually. We want an ever-developing relationship with our customers. If we had a static building in every city, it wouldn’t reinforce change as our concept, would it?” FUTURE “The next fifteen year period will bring more change to buildings than anything we have seen. There is increasing pressure on all of us because no one has the money to build what we have to build. It will be on the AEs and owners to figure out how to get the next generation of buildings built. Steel, as an industry, thinks differently than other industries; it is progressive. It is the most innovative material we build with, far away above other materials when it comes to recycled content. It isn’t publicly seen as green, but it is the most strategically green. It will be integral to the future.”
www.aisc.org 866.ASK.AISC There’s always a solution in steel.
Circle no. 33 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
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CONTENTS March/April 2011
44
FEATURES Red, White, Blue, and Green 44
Five land ports of entry to the U.S. welcome visitors through border crossings that are secure and sustainable.
Hallowed Ground 56
Belzberg Architects integrates the lessons of the past with hopes for the future.
Layers of Evolution 62
62
56
A Canadian redevelopment connects history and ecology.
On the Cover: The U.S. Land Port of Entry in Calais, Maine, designed by Robert Siegel Architects. Photo by Paul Warchol. MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 5
CONTENTS
17
DEPARTMENTS Viewpoint 8 Greenscene 10 AIArchitect 15 Products 39 Deep Green 17
The director of sustainability at Westlake Reed Leskosky looks at the path ahead for energy codes, standards, and benchmarking.
Technology 21
This page, clockwise from top: Henry Obasi, Bjarke Ingels Group; Jameson Simpson Previous page, clockwise from top: Michael Moran; Michael Leckman/Diamond and Schmitt Architects; Iwan Baan
Using the right lighting-calculation tools can mean the difference between the success or failure of a project. So how do designers choose the correct ones for the job?
Flashback 27
The Thoreau Center for Sustainability transformed a military hospital into a home for environmentally conscious nonprofits.
Perspective 33
William McDonough of William McDonough + Partners.
Ecocentric 72
A Danish waste-to-energy plant doubles as a downhill ski slope.
ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
Visit us online for more articles, news, and products. Among this month’s hightlights: Perspective: Viewpoints on land port of entry design from the U.S. General Services Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection. Deep Green: Green Cred—Degrees and certificates in sustainable design. Technology: Examining geothermal systems. Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/ecostructure Become a Facebook fan at facebook.com 6 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
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72 AN AIA MAGAZINE
Think Green.
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ECOLOGY MATTERS The process of examining sustainability beyond the scale of the individual building will drive the AIA’s National Convention in New Orleans, May 12–14.
Aiming for Zero
When it comes to the environmental performance of its facilities, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is aiming low. Very low. In October 2009, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13514, which directs federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and waste, increase their energy efficiency and water conservation, support sustainable communities, and leverage their purchasing power to promote environmentally responsible products. (Read the full order at eco-structure.com). The GSA, however, doesn’t just want to reduce its environmental footprint. It wants to eliminate it. Speaking to the USGBC Federal Summit on May 18, 2010, GSA administrator Martha Johnson explained, “We are setting our sights on eliminating the impact of the federal government on our natural environment. Yes, you heard it correctly. The word is ‘eliminate,’ not ‘limit.’ I’m not kidding. Zero environmental footprint.” With a portfolio that accounts for 362 million square feet, this small target is a big deal. As a step toward the zero environmental footprint (ZEF) goal, last October, the GSA updated its federal building requirements to mandate LEED Gold certification for all new federal building construction and substantial renovations. While LEED Silver remains the required level of certification for construction lease projects of 10,000 square feet or more, and LEED certification does not eliminate an environmental footprint, it’s a step in the right direction. Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the GSA received $5.5 billion for sustainable design–related investments. Of this, $4.5 billion was spent on high-performance modernizations and retrofits and $1 billion was spent on new green buildings. Some of this investment can be seen in “Red, White, Blue, and Green” starting on page 44. We look at five land ports of entry to the U.S., all winners in the GSA’s 2010 Design Awards. The biennial program recognizes high-quality design, art, and construction in federal building and nearly half of 8 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
this year’s winning spaces were land ports, facilities that act as the face of the nation to the millions of people that pass through them. Requiring LEED certification and investing in environmental upgrades are key strategies in reducing the government’s footprint, but much more work remains. To say that getting to the ZEF goal will require a lot of effort is a vast understatement. American bureaucracy isn’t known for operating at high speeds, and the process of working with the government is rarely described as easy. In her speech last May, Johnson said that the ZEF target is the GSA’s equivalent of when NASA first set out to put a man on the moon in the 1960s. Speaking again on the goal at the GSA’s biennial Design Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., this past January, Johnson explained that eliminating the GSA’s footprint will require clever, inventive, and progressive ways of merging sustainability and design. In both instances, however, her outlook was optimistic: While it will be challenging and timeconsuming, with innovation, experimentation, and persistence, it will also be achievable. I also think it’s quite inspirational. If good design—meaning beautiful, functional, highperforming, and inspirational spaces —is possible within the complexity of national bureaucracy, I think it should be achievable everywhere, don’t you?
What does that mean for the architecture profession? Find out in May when Friedman headlines the AIA’s National Convention and Design Exposition in New Orleans. This year’s convention theme is "Regional Design Revolution: Ecology Matters,” and programming will focus on the role of architecture and planning in creating and promoting sustainable communities—a theme close to the heart of ECO-STRUCTURE. New Orleans provides an ideal backdrop to discuss the links between architecture, ecology, regionality, and urban planning. Six years after Hurricane Katrina and one year after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the region continues to rebuild and raise discussion points that are applicable to metropolises around the world. Can we build in a way that honors a region’s culture and history, fosters future prosperity, and respects, preserves, and restores local ecosystems? The 2011 convention brings with it a number of changes. ECO-STRUCTURE’s parent company, Hanley Wood, LLC, is now managing the convention and expo, and in approaching this year’s event, our exhibitions team took to heart feedback from years past. So, while in the past, attendees have had to choose education sessions over time exploring products at the expo, this year’s schedule is better organized to offer both without compromise. Additional education opportunities will be available on the expo floor as special classrooms will be installed along a main circulation corridor, dubbed “The Avenue,” which will also be home to touch-down spots to eat, network, and rest weary feet. We’ll be tweeting live from the show (@ecostructure) and hope to see you there. For more information on this year’s convention, visit convention.aia.org. AN AIA MAGAZINE
Mike Morgan
VIEWPOINT
In 2008, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman followed up his 2005 best seller, The World is Flat, with Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Calling for a global green revolution led by the U.S., Friedman contends that the current energy-climate era needs clean-tech leadership and innovation to tackle the challenges of resource scarcity, climate change, social inequality, and loss of biodiversity.
Sustainability – it’s serious business. CertainTeed Gypsum is committed to preservation of natural resources, recycling, waste management, and reclamation in our operations. We are part of Saint-Gobain, the world’s largest gypsum wallboard manufacturer. Our innovative, sustainable building materials can contribute to the built environment’s indoor environmental quality, acoustics management, fire resistance, and materials recycled content. To see how sustainability suits you, visit: www.CertainTeed.com/Sustainable
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Circle no. 78 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
LEED Platinum USGBC Headquarters, by Envision Design, Washington, D.C.
GREENSCENE LEED Platinum PNC Place, by Gensler, Washington, D.C.
LEED Platinum FBI Regional Office, by Lohan Anderson, Chicago
LEED Platinum American Society of Hematology, by RTKL, Washington, D.C.
LEED Platinum LOTT Regional Services Center, by the Miller Hull Partnership, Seattle
The District of Columbia is the top region in the nation for LEED-certified commerical and institutional green buildings per capita, according to a recent Top 10 list from the USGBC. Based on U.S. 2010 Census information, the District averages 25 square feet of LEED-certified space per capita. Nevada is the leading state, with 10.92 square feet per capita. The top 10 states, plus D.C., for 2010 are: 1. D.C., 25.15 square feet • 2. Nevada, 10.92 square feet • 3. New Mexico, 6.35 square feet • 4. New Hampshire, 4.49 square feet • 5. Oregon, 4.07 square feet • 6. South Carolina, 3.19 square feet • 7. Washington, 3.16 square feet • 8. Illinois, 3.09 square feet • 9. Arkansas, 2.90 square feet • 10. Colorado, 2.85 square feet • 11. Minnesota, 2.77 square feet According the USGBC, more than 40,000 projects are currently participating in the commercial and institutional LEED systems, which account for more than 7.9 billion total square feet of construction in all 50 U.S. states and in 117 countries. Of the projects reviewed for the per-capita list, commercial office buildings were the most common project type, while for-profit organizations were the most-common owners. eco-structure stffff 10 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
Clockwise from top left: Courtesy PNC; Eric Laignel; David B. Seide; Nic Lehoux; Paul Warchol.
Greenest of Them All?
Circle no. 62 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
Call for Entries
eco-structure is now accepting entries for the 2011 Evergreen Awards. The fourth annual competition features new categories and deadlines. This year, entries will be accepted in five categories: Ecommercial, New Construction; Ecommercial, Existing Buildings; Greenhouse; On the Boards; and Perspective. The first three categories are for built projects completed after Jan. 1, 2007. The fourth category, On the Boards, is for unbuilt or in-progress work, and the fifth category, Perspective, is for individual practitioners. The competition is open to architects, contractors, designers, developers, and other building professionals based in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. However, projects entered in the competition may be located anywhere around the globe. Structures that have won other industry awards are eligible for entry, but projects that have won past Evergreen Awards are not. Entries are due by 5 p.m. EST on May 31. Judging will take place in summer 2011, and winners will be notified by Sept. 1. In addition to being recognized at a formal luncheon during Greenbuild International Conference and Expo in October, winners also will be featured in eec-ostresrte’s September/October issue and online at eco-structure.com. For more information on this year’s competition, including the 2011 entry form, visit eco-structure.com/evergreen. eec-ostresrte osaffff
CIRCLE NO. 96 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
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march/april 2011
photo: courtesy gsa
Raising the Bar The GSA has set ambitious goals for the renovation and construction of federal buildings. Now they need architects to fulfill that vision. heather dewar
with 352 million square feet of office space under its control and a construction budget of more than $1.3 billion last year, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is one of the most influential architectural clients in the world. So the agency’s decision to boost its minimum requirements for LEED certification from Silver to Gold for most of its upcoming projects is more than a milestone for sustainable design. It’s also a business opportunity for architects. To take advantage of that opportunity, GSA and AIA experts say that architects need to understand that the federal agency goes beyond these LEED standards, focusing not so much on point tallies in each LEED category as on the underlying concept of “long life/loose fit.” Design leaders inside and outside of GSA say that the most sustainable building is not necessarily the one scoring highest on energy
efficiency the day its ribbon is cut. Rather, it’s the most resilient one—the building that can adopt new technology and adapt to the changing nature of work, and do it for decades to come. “The touchstone is ease of change,” says Jean Carroon, FAIA, LEED AP, a principal at Goody Clancy of Boston. “The people we work with at GSA are very knowledgeable about sustainability and LEED. On most GSA projects, the thinking goes well beyond the existing LEED standards. It’s a much more sophisticated conversation about extending the service life of the building and the potential for longterm flexibility.” As the federal government’s main civilian property manager, the GSA builds or leases about 40 percent of federal facilities—some 9,600 buildings, according to agency spokesperson MaryAnne Beatty. Most GSA buildings are courthouses, office buildings, or border-crossing points, but the agency’s inventory includes virtually every type of government building except hospitals, prisons, and military facilities. GSA installed its first green roof way back in the early 1920s and was an early adopter of LEED standards in 2000, says Lance Davis, AIA, LEED AP, GSA’s program manager for design excellence in architecture. At the end of 2010, the GSA had 59 LEED-certified properties, the most LEED-rated buildings of any federal agency. In 2002, GSA tapped Carroon’s firm to transform Boston’s John W. McCormack Post Office and Courthouse, a historic landmark built in 1933, into a regional headquarters for the Environmental Protection Agency and office space for other federal agencies. The renovated building retained its noteworthy historic features and 99 percent of its original shell. Hidden behind the original Art Deco marble, terrazzo, wood, and ironwork are new systems that allow the building to accommodate more workers while reducing water and energy
16
“On most GSA projects, the thinking goes well beyond the existing LEED standards. It’s a much more sophisticated conversation.” “We’re redefining how we work,” Davis says. “We’re trying to redefine what is a workspace. Not everyone is in a cubicle. Not everyone gets an office.” As workspaces shrink, it’s important to make them “places that people want to work in,” Davis says. One way to do that is with “a lot more daylighting. We still have a lot of work for our design teams to understand what good daylighting is and what’s just a big window with a lot of glare.” As the bar for GSA projects rises, there are strong opportunities for architecture firms fluent in sustainable design. But that doesn’t mean that architects new to green building can’t break into the GSA’s pool of projects. Future projects appear in the privately published Commerce Business Daily and are listed on the government procurement website, fedbizopps.gov. Each listing describes the project’s location, scope, and estimated production schedule, as well as the range of award amounts, and sets out the criteria used to evaluate applicants. Firms usually have at least 30 to 45 days to submit a proposal, which goes through a two-stage review. While the GSA’s paperwork demands may be greater than most private clients’, Davis says that the peer review process helps give small firms and firms new to government a shot at landing a GSA contract. “An integrated design process, understanding of sustainability, and willingness to put in hard work can be keys to success,” he says.
AIAPERSPECTIVE
photo: william stewart
march/april 2011
consumption, with 70 percent of the energy used coming from renewable sources. The building’s new centerpiece is a fifth-floor green roof irrigated by rainwater that flows through solar-powered pumps. The garden transformed an unsightly array of air handlers into a haven for wildlife and workers. Heating and cooling systems are tucked into existing hidden mechanical spaces, making it easy to reconfigure workspaces as the building’s uses change, Carroon says. Originally intended to achieve LEED Silver, the McCormack building was ultimately certified LEED Gold, says Davis, who cited the project as an example of best practices in sustainability. The GSA’s new LEED Gold requirement applies to all new construction and substantial renovations. (LEED Silver remains the requirement for GSA-leased new construction of 10,000 square feet or more.) Davis says that the decision to boost GSA’s LEED requirement was driven in part by a growing pool of LEED-experienced architects and by improvements in materials and systems. “Most of our projects are already at the Silver and Gold levels,” Davis says. “The market has already moved there.” Of the 25 GSA projects certified in 2009 and 2010, 11 achieved Silver and 10 achieved Gold. In September, about the same time the GSA announced the upgraded LEED requirements, the agency unveiled a sustainability plan that sets a long-term goal of achieving a zero environmental footprint and pledges to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020. The agency’s sustainability plan calls for reducing energy consumption in federal buildings by one-third, conserving water, increasing renewable-energy generation, improving stewardship of electronics, and reducing emissions from employee commuting and business travel by 25 percent. Those goals may require more compact workspaces that can be adapted to multiple uses, as well as higher rates of telecommuting.
to the right of the front lobby desk, visitors to the aia’s Washington, D.C., headquarters encounter what is arguably the building’s single most outstanding design feature: the granite wall on which the names of the AIA’s Gold Medal recipients are carved. Midway down the list is the name of this nation’s third president, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was a man of great ideas, among which was the connection he saw between public architecture and the ideals of a new nation. Although a staunch advocate of small government, he passionately believed that the civic institutions of the republic—its courthouses, legislative halls, custom houses, and libraries—should be models not of mediocrity but of excellence. When, for example, Jefferson cast about for a model for Virginia’s new Capitol in Richmond, he chose the Maison Carrée not because it was cheap to build but because, to him, its chaste lines and noble proportions, transplanted to the brow of a hill overlooking the James River, would both reflect and shape the highest aspirations of the commonwealth’s civic discourse. It would be a model—both at home and abroad—of this nation’s values and ideals. As a student of the classics, Jefferson was also in touch with another idea, one as old as as Rome itself: that the investment in public architecture had the potential to orchestrate the pattern of community development according to the genius of a particular site. Although a certain style might prevail—Palladian in the case of Jefferson—style could be and was adapted in ways that communicated a common vocabulary of national ideals while contributing to a unique and nurturing sense of place. At a time when public officials at all levels of government are looking for ways to cut budgets, architects should not be wringing their hands, fearing a dramatic decline in the quality of public architecture a foregone conclusion. Instead, whether through informed advocacy or initiatives such as the General Services Administration’s commitment to sustainability, we should—and the AIA will—help elected officials understand this powerful truth: Design is their greatest resource. Investing in it is money well spent and the basis of vibrant and sustainable communities. Citing the example of Jefferson is a good place to begin. Clark D. Manus, FAIA, 2011 President
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Learn how to become involved through the AIA by visiting www.aia.org.
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DEEP GREEN
Measuring Compliance THE DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY AT WESTLAKE REED LESKOSKY LOOKS AT THE PATH AHEAD FOR ENERGY CODES, STANDARDS, AND BENCHMARKING. Text Roger Chang, Assoc. AIA Illustration Henry Obasi
In 2010, Martha Johnson, administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), announced the GSA’s bold commitment to achieving a zero environmental footprint. This commitment, plus carbon neutrality initiatives set by Architecture 2030, the AIA, and other institutions, will require innovative design approaches, supported by forward-looking building simulation and energy codes in the United States. Energy codes have become progressively stricter over the past decade, spurred by the green-building movement, the government, and climate-change research. One major concern is the lack of uniform code adoption across the United States. While 20 states currently reference the latest MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 17
DEEP GREEN
version of the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC 2009) and ASHRAE Standard 90.12007 for commercial buildings, seven states have no statewide energy code, and the rest reference the 2006 or 2003 IECC, or a state-created code. Energy codes prescribe minimum requirements for a building’s envelope, lighting, hot water used for non-heating purposes, HVAC, and power systems, using mandatory, prescriptive, and performancebased compliance paths. By 2013, 32 states are expected to meet or exceed the 2009 IECC or 90.12007, which is a move in the right direction. (See
a state-by-state listing of current energy codes at energycodes.gov/states.) Performance-based compliance has been brought into the national spotlight, spurred in large part by Energy and Atmosphere Credit 1 (Optimize Energy Performance) in the USGBC’s LEED rating system. Because of this credit, the notion of exceeding energy code by a certain percentage has become commonplace in the industry. Similar to how we rate a car’s fuel economy, there is a desire to quantify a building’s performance with one number. Homing in on percentage savings requires whole-building energy modeling, most often using the performance-rating method (Appendix G) of ASHRAE Standard 90.1. Modeling to this method is fraught with challenges, and significant variability in results often occurs because of differences in the software tools used, an energy modeler’s background, hundreds of input assumptions, and interpretation of standards language. One major challenge is that ASHRAE Standard 90.1 is managed as a continuous maintenance standard, which allows addenda to be proposed and adopted continuously. The 2007 standard has more than 100 addenda—some of them significant—and it raises the question: How do owners, designers, builders, and code officials keep up? Due to a significant focus on LEED and the intricacies of Appendix G modeling, mandatory and prescriptive approaches are missed or potentially misapplied. In 2010, the Institute for Market Transformation completed a study that showed that $810 million in funding would be needed to achieve 90-percent energy-code compliance, resulting in a six-toone benefit-cost ratio in energy cost savings. Has energy-code compliance and modeling become too complicated, heading in the direction of the nation’s tax codes? In engineering schools across the country, students are taught the concept of KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Energy modeling has become an important part of a building’s design process, but can result in a disproportionate amount of time spent on baseline model creation, rather than parametric design optimization. With carbon neutrality as an aspiration, the baseline becomes less important than what a project team within a budget can do to achieve best value, a balance between energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality. The recently opened research-support facility at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colo., is a good example of a net-zero-energy LEED Platinum project that achieved aggressive goals within a tight budget, using simulation appropriately. By using the daylight simulation tool Radiance in the conceptual design phase, the team was able to easily make changes to glazing selections and the building form to optimize daylighting. The team was able to determine the optimal angle for the top floor’s sloped ceiling and shape custom-designed window louvers to better direct daylight inside. Owners and design teams must be careful to have an open dialogue about the impact of
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input assumptions on simulation results. No energy model can pinpoint actual performance because of the difficulty in accounting for climate variations, building maintenance, occupant behavior, and operations. For example, in a given year, solar radiation on a project site may vary by up to 10 percent from the median. In 2009, ASHRAE announced the Building Energy Quotient labeling system with the goal of providing publicly visible labels showing the energy performance of a building as designed and in operation via a gradebased system. Adoption of this labeling system will increase transparency, but it must also be deployed with standardized software tools to ensure consistency. As the building industry continues to struggle in this difficult economy, energy efficiency must be achieved through clear standards that can be consistently and easily enforced so that time and money is not wasted. Energy codes can help stimulate demand for robust and efficient building products. Can the industry rally together to adopt a national energy code? By standardizing codes, the playing field will be leveled and will allow for greater synergy across the United States with improved education and enforcement capability. Let’s unify energy code and simulation efforts so we can all do more with less. ▪ Roger Chang, Assoc. AIA, is principal and director of sustainability at Westlake Reed Leskosky. wrldesign.com.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES • ASHRAE Building Energy Quotient Program. This labeling program seeks to improve the transparency of building-energy information. buildingeq.com • Commercial Energy Services Network (COMNET). This initiative supports existing
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TECHNOLOGY
Light Meter
USING THE RIGHT LIGHTING-CALCULATION TOOLS CAN MEAN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SUCCESS OR FAILURE OF A PROJECT. SO HOW DO DESIGNERS CHOOSE THE CORRECT ONES FOR THE JOB?
Text Aaron Seward Illustration Jameson Simpson
Understanding how light will affect an architectural space can be a tricky business. Beyond figuring out how much is needed and how it will behave in a given built environment, light has other variables such as code requirements and energy targets, glare and reflectivity, comfort and controllability, and the often unpredictable element of daylight, that add up to create a complex puzzle for designers hoping to deliver a building that is both energy-efficient and well-lit. Luckily, there is also a myriad of readily available lighting-calculation tools—both softwarebased and old-fashioned hand calculations and rules of thumb—that can help to predict the wide range of factors that play into a project’s lighting scheme and can help you to zero in on the right balance of utility and quality. Measuring Light All lighting-calculation tools use two metrics to quantify light. One is illuminance: the amount of luminous flux per unit area, which is measured in footcandles or lux. The other is luminance: the intensity of light reflected from a surface, which is measured in candelas. “Most lighting is planned with illuminance,” explains Christopher Meek, AIA, a research assistant professor of architecture at the University of Washington in Seattle. “You often don’t know what the surfaces in a space are going to be, so you plan to deliver a certain amount of light to a horizontal surface.” But, knowing your surfaces and measuring MARCH /APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 21
TECHNOLOGY
Accounting for variables is the foundation for creating a dynamic lighting scheme that reduces energy use while ensuring adequate light levels.
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luminance are key to understanding light. Forty footcandles falling on a black surface will appear different from the same amount of light falling on a white surface due to the difference in the amount of light that is reflected. One important thing to grasp about both illuminance and luminance is that they measure light at a single point in time. That works fine for electrical lighting systems, which do the same thing every time you flip the switch. But this leaves something to be desired when attempting to calculate daylighting, which changes drastically depending on the time of day, the season, the latitude and longitude, and, of course, the weather. Accounting for those variables is the foundation for creating a dynamic lighting scheme that reduces energy use while ensuring adequate light levels. The Right Tools “Lighting-calculation tools fall into two basic categories,” says Tate Walker, AIA, a senior project director at the Energy Center of Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization in Madison, Wis., that focuses on reducing energy use. “You have your cheap, quick, and dirty ways to get good numbers, and then there’s the high-road option, if money is no object and the goals are lofty.” The low road begins with good-old spreadsheet calculations, using manufacturer specs to figure out your lighting power density and where savings can be made. There are also more sophisticated and free software packages available for download to designers. A new and handy tool for electric lighting schemes is Commercial Lighting Solutions (CLS), a free, Web-based program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy that was released in 2009. Located online at www.lightingsolutions .energy.gov, CLS allows you to enter project-specific energy data—watts per square foot—and it then outputs recommendations for technology to use and a generic luminaire schedule that can be passed on to a manufacturer’s representative. While programs such as CLS offer quick and easy ways to make sure you’re hitting your energy targets with an electrical lighting scheme, there are also free, downloadable daylighting tools. The Sensor Placement + Optimization Tool (SPOT, available at archenergy.com/SPOT), calculates natural light from a given location for how much illuminance is available at a given time of year, allowing designers to optimize window placements and translucency. Skycalc, another daylighting tool available through various websites, does the same thing, but specifically for top lighting, or skylights. Both operate using Radiance (available at radsite.lbl .gov/radiance/HOME.html), a program that former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory employee Greg Ward Larson began developing in 1985, which uses algorithms to mimic the physical behavior of light at a single point in time. So in order to predict the range of natural light levels a project may be availed of, you could choose to simulate days in June, September, and March at 9 a.m., 12 p.m., and AN AIA MAGAZINE
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TECHNOLOGY
3 p.m. on each day, which would give you a good idea of distribution levels throughout the year. The next level of software calculation tools combines manufacturer photometric data with the highest-quality light-simulating algorithms, outputting presentation-level renderings that show how a given lighting scheme—both daylighting and electric—will work in a space. These include Lighting Analysts’ AGi32 and Autodesk’s Ecotect Analysis and 3ds Max programs. Each of these programs give designers the capability to look at any type of space using any shading method in any location on the globe outfitted with any luminaire. They are highly flexible, but the models take much longer to set up than the quick-anddirty options. One of biggest faults of all of the lightingcalculation tools mentioned above is that they capture a dynamic process in single points of time. To really understand how light affects a space over time you would have to simulate every hour of every day under every sky condition. A program by Christoph Reinhart, an associate professor in the department of architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design, called Daysim (available at daysim.com) attempts to remedy this
TH E B E AUTY OF LOG I C.
limitation by annualizing illuminance calculations using a metric called “daylight autonomy.” Daylight autonomy refers to the percentage of occupied time that a space can function with daylight alone. So, if you have a space that will be occupied between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., and you want to maintain 300 lux during that period, Daysim will tell you how much time you will be at that level with daylight alone. This could provide the foundation for a good energy-performance model. All of the lighting-calculation tools that we’ve discussed here provide a survey of what is available, but there are more options out there for designers. At the end of the day, though, no single tool is going to do it all. Developers and architects may choose to hire a specialty consultant to handle light modeling, depending on the level of complexity and whether the project’s budget can support it. As Walker says, “There are so many different things you’re trying to zero in on—peak loads, heat loading, glare, views, control, usability, and building-space types—we usually have a quiver of tools we bring to the table.” ▪ Aaron Seward writes about architecture and technology from Brooklyn, N.Y.
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FLASHBACK
Swords to Ploughshares THE THOREAU CENTER FOR SUSTAINABILITY TRANSFORMED A MILITARY HOSPITAL INTO A HOME FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS NONPROFITS. Text David R. Macaulay Photos Richard Barnes
About 150 years ago, Henry David Thoreau wrote that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World.” This thought still resonates today with the different kind of preservation on display at San Francisco’s Thoreau Center for Sustainability. Since 1996, the restored 150,000-square-foot complex on the grounds of the Presidio of San Francisco, part of the National Park Service’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area, has been home to as many as 60 nonprofit organizations at the same time, all devoted to environmental and social justice issues. Located in the historic wards of Letterman Hospital, which was constructed between 1899 and 1902 and was the U.S. Army’s largest hospital by 1918, the center has served as a model for
redevelopment and innovative public-private partnerships. Equally important, the rehabilitation of the site’s 12 two- and three-story buildings presented an early prototype for combining preservation and sustainable design principles, transforming historic buildings into economically viable office space for the future. The National Trust for Historic Preservation recognized this accomplishment in 1997 with an Honor Award, while the AIA’s Committee on the Environment named it one of its Top Ten Green Projects for 1998. By the 1960s, much of the original hospital had fallen into disrepair and was badly in need of major MEP and life-safety improvements, and in 1969 the U.S. Army demolished all but eight structures. MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 27
FLASHBACK
In rehabilitating the old hospital buildings, open office layouts presented an acoustical challenge, particularly because of the hard plaster surfaces in the historic structures. Also, many occupants wanted traditional, private office settings. LMS continues to address this through close attention to acoustic treatments.
The remaining facilities—the original three-story, wood-frame headquarters, three adjacent concrete buildings, and four wood buildings—were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1962. Reconstruction was divided into two phases, with the first phase rehabilitating the headquarters and adjacent concrete buildings and the second phase rehabilitating the four wood buildings. The historic registration of the existing facilities played a dominant role in transforming the older structures into new office space. As a historic landmark, all building upgrades had to conform with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, published in 1992. The National Park Service also expected systems and materials to meet its Guiding Principles of Sustainable Design, published in 1993. As a result, the current design by San Francisco–based Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (LMS) retains the hospital’s original circulation and general plan. Enclosing the original porte cocheres—entry porches originally used for ambulance arrivals —on two of the concrete ward buildings created new tenant space. Concealed mullions were approved to infill these areas. The north corridor connecting all the buildings now serves as the main connector for all the organizations operating within, and a shared café and conference facilities are now the buildings’ social center. A photovoltaic array, not so common in 1996, was built into the entryway of the main building and provides about 8kWh of power per day, which is fed back into the grid. These changes also meet another project requirement: Federal standards dictate that architectural features must follow “reversible” design practices without damaging the original structure should a building’s use change again in the future. On this note, the original tile covering the buildings’ interiors, which posed acoustical problems, was not removed but rather was carefully covered with drywall. Spread over multiple wings, the center features high-efficiency lighting, heating, and cooling systems, as well as formaldehyde-free paints, cotton batt insulation, and sustainably harvested wood paneling. Recycled material includes bathroom tiles made from recycled car and airplane windshields and recycled aluminum storefronts for the interior offices and exterior porte cocheres. As originally designed, the hospital wards relied on narrow floor plates and abundant access to exterior windows. This layout made the structures ideal candidates for exploiting daylighting and natural ventilation. “One of the great lessons of the Thoreau Center is CIRCLE NO. 30 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
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FLASHBACK
what these buildings had to offer,” recalls Marsha Maytum, FAIA, principal at LMS. “The buildings were designed in a sensible way, so there was fresh air and everybody had access to natural light because they didn’t have the ability to artificially ventilate or rely on electricity.” Cross-ventilation combined with operable windows and attic roof vents helps circulate air naturally. The center’s first phase, comprising 75,000 square feet, was completed in 1996, while the 75,000-square-foot second phase was completed
in 1998. Today, tenants include the World Wildlife Fund and the Tides Foundation, among others. The Tides Foundation, along with Equity Community Builders, led the original redevelopment effort. Maytum returns to the Thoreau Center periodically to consult on refreshing interior spaces or to ask about the buildings’ performance. She recalls how compelling the idea seemed more than 15 years ago. “When it became clear the U.S. Army was going to turn the Presidio over to the National Park Service, the Tides saw this as a great opportunity to take the idea of ‘beating swords into ploughshares’ and create this new type of community resource,” she says. “At the time the Thoreau Center opened, there were only three multitenant nonprofit centers in the country, according to the Tides Foundation. There was such a great interest in what had been achieved, the Tides created a whole nonprofit center network and is now a thriving organization. By 2001, there were eight of these centers, and in 2011 there are now more than 250. This idea of a shared center for like-minded organizations has become a powerful model.” ▪ David R. Macaulay is the author of Integrated Design: Mithun and the blog, Green ArchiText at greenarchitext.com.
LESSONS LEARNED The adaptive reuse of the old Letterman Hospital stands as a model for protecting architectural and cultural resources while creating an enriching space for current tenants. Ultimately, says Marsha Maytum, FAIA, principal of San Francisco–based Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (LMS), the project team’s goal was “to prove it was possible to integrate sustainable design strategies and transform the use of these buildings in a way that did not compromise their historic integrity because they were national landmarks.” With the LEED rating system still in its pilot phase at the time of the center’s construction, architects were just beginning to explore the intersection of historic preservation and sustainable design. Maytum offers these key lessons learned through work on the Center: • Continue to press for the use, and approval, of truly green materials. During predesign phases in 1994, the project’s biggest challenge became identifying low-VOC paints and carpet and other eco-friendly materials with suppliers, and then convincing local reviewing agencies to approve materials such as cotton batt insulation as a viable element of the building rehabilitation. • Seek solutions that merge preservation with sustainaility. The center illustrates the possibilities of adaptive reuse by integrating sustainable design without compromising the attributes of a historic landmark. An overarching goal for the project’s two developers, Equity Community Builders and the Tides Foundation, is to sustainably transform existing community resources into spaces that are appropriate for important uses today. • Balance the need for privacy with open office plans. Maximizing daylighting and cross ventilation implies an open office layout, yet this presented an acoustical challenge, particularly in historic buildings with hard plaster surfaces. Also, many occupants expressed a desire for traditional, private office settings. LMS continues to address this through close attention to acoustic treatments, while ensuring that each program incorporates private and shared private spaces. • Integrated design processes and tools are still evolving. “The tools available now to predict performance and understand daylighting has been a great development in how we can design sustainably and work as an integrated team in the early design phases and communicate what we’re doing with our clients,” Maytum says.
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PERSPECTIVE
Continuous Experimentation
Interview David R. Macaulay Portrait Mike Morgan
William McDonough, FAIA, and his firm, William McDonough + Partners in Charlottesville, Va., are recognized names in green architecture. Through a body of work that includes designs for Gap, Herman Miller, and Nike, McDonough and his firm have explored architecture that supports nature, grows over time, and contains a clear intent to incorporate safe materials. McDonough started practicing in New York in the early 1980s, founded his architectural practice, William McDonough + Partners, in 1994, cofounded McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in 1995, and served as dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia from 1994 to 1999. Years after graduating from Dartmouth College and Yale University, McDonough still reflects on his first project while at Yale, a solar-heated house built in Ireland in 1976. He recently spoke with eco-structure about encouraging human imagination, and the joy and determination in realizing spaces that connect people with their environments. MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 33
“I learned a lot. ‌ Try everything, consider failure not an option, and have fun—make it part of your life. And making mistakes is not a bad thing. We don’t glide from success to success, we lurch from failure to failure. But in the end you end up with the light bulb.â€?
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Your ďŹ rst project, the solar house in Ireland, seems an unlikely showcase for green architecture. Why start there, and how did you get it to work? I wondered whether in that climate, where it’s usually about 55 F and wet outside, and where people live at about 58 F inside because that’s what they can get, we could reach some other level of comfort using solar. I said, “I’m not here to achieve creature comfort for someone from Palm Beach [Fla.]; I’m here to honor this place and connect to the sun.â€? I designed a very simple vertical air collector featuring gravity dampers at the bottom and top. If a little gust of air came across it, the damper would turn. When the sun was shining and the vertical collectors met, they captured low winter sun. When the sun shined, the air would go out the top of the house. Then, if the air dropped in the morning or when it was dark outside, the air would drop to the bottom and shut the damper. No motors, no sound, no electricity. I learned a lot there: Try everything, consider failure not an option, and have fun —make it part of your life. And making mistakes is not a bad thing. We don’t glide from success to success, we lurch from failure to failure. But in the end you end up with the light bulb.
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Experimentation seems to be a thread running through your work. In 1984 we [the New York ďŹ rm] completed the ďŹ rst green oďŹƒce, for the Environmental Defense Fund in New York, at a time when architects were starting to consider the impact of materials, not just energy, in our designs — what was in the chair, what was in the light ďŹ xture, what was in the paint and the carpets. Only a few people were starting to think about it. By the early 1990s, we had started work on the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Oberlin College. Then, the primary dialogue coming out of the Rio Earth Summit [the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992] urged a retuning of the engines of commerce and industry to be more eďŹƒcient. But to me, it seemed inadequate at that moment in time, because being less bad was not being good: Less is a relationship and bad is a human value, AN AIA MAGAZINE
not a metric. We wanted to know what it would mean to design in support of nature instead of being antagonistic; What principles would we need to operate under? At Oberlin, our idea was to make a building that accrues solar energy. In order to be a living thing, you have to grow and have to have cells replacing cells that are dying. And to have growth, you must have some form of income: food and water. Then you need an open system of chemicals operating for the beneďŹ t of the organisms and their reproduction. This led to us looking at all the materials planned for the building to ensure that we removed carcinogens, mutagens, and volatile organic compounds. The materials had to be safe. That sounds like an early iteration of your ideas on combining nature-inspired design with chemistry that led to your 2002 book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, with Michael Braungart. I have been so fortunate to collaborate with Michael since the early 1990s. Developing the idea of Cradle to Cradle was a wonderful process and a special joy. Now Michael and I are hard at work ďŹ nishing our second book, which in some ways is even more interesting because it oers us a unique chance to look at the early form of the ideas and the many years of their application. We’ve also been looking at ways that some observers tend to oversimplify and even misunderstand some elements of the Cradle to Cradle protocol. For example, some people believe it’s simply a matter of closing loops. That’s an important concept, but the protocol we’ve developed has ďŹ ve vertebrae: materials as nutrients, reverse logistics, renewable energy, water quality, and social responsibility. At this moment, we are also seeing Cradle to Cradle expand more quickly. Michael Braungart’s Hamburg-based ďŹ rm, the Environmental Protection and Encouragement Agency, is running the Cradle to Cradle Festival in Berlin, which celebrates Cradle to Cradle as a cultural change agent that is inuencing not just products and processes, but architecture, planning, city design, and more. This concept has implications at all scales, from the molecule to the region. Another big thing happening right now is that Michael and I have gifted the Cradle to Cradle certiďŹ cation protocol to a nonproďŹ t organization, the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, so that we can take this to scale much faster. Previously, our little company consulted with very big companies one at a time. This is inspiring, important, and complex work, but it can only go so fast. We realized that the best way to increase the pace of progress dramatically would be to give the intellectual property to an independent nonproďŹ t. They are gearing up now, and I think the next 18 months will be very exciting.
PERSPECTIVE
You often speak of measuring the success in terms that go beyond payback or energy savings to also focus on exibility, adaptation, and evolution. It’s part of what makes these places long-lasting and loved. At the same time we were working for Oberlin College, we were designing Herman Miller’s Greenhouse Factory & OďŹƒces [completed in 1995] in Holland, Mich., and Gap’s corporate campus [completed in 1997] in San Bruno, Calif. At Herman Miller, we realized all the employees wanted daylight, so everyone shares the same “urban boulevardâ€? from
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the training rooms and cafés. Productivity of the company doubled when they moved in. It was the same people; all they did was move. For Gap’s 901 Cherry Street offices, we designed one of the first, big, intensive commercial green roofs. In Oberlin, we were creating a technical nutrient-solar-photosynthetic roof to support PV arrays; but our next challenge was to establish a biological nutrient roof at Gap that was covered in native grasses and wildflowers to reduce stormwater on site and dampen noise from a nearby airport.
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It seems that many of your firm’s ideas about sustainable design are coming together with Sustainability Base, NASA’s new facility at Moffett Field, Calif., set for completion in May 2011. One of the things about our practice that has always inspired me is the trajectory of learning that each project represents. Working with NASA has been a special joy because they had lofty aspirations and were not afraid of my aspirations. They wanted the first spaceship for Earth. Why not? I said that it should be a healthy and safe workplace that demonstrated what a positive human footprint could be. Why not? The project is designed to be energy positive, meaning that it will produce more energy than it needs to operate. That’s something that we started working on at Oberlin with David Orr, and that project is consistently producing 13 percent more energy than it uses. Whether for NASA or Ford or back to the early days of creating Oberlin’s Lewis Center, it seems you have worked consistently to redefine “eco-efficiency.” What we’ve discovered is that, essentially, efficiency is just a tool. It has no value. It’s like a hammer: A hammer doesn’t know if it’s good or bad. It’s a tool. We also found that if you’re simply building efficiently with the old system, which is what we saw in contradistinction to the idea of a living building, then you might be making the wrong things efficient. So we decided to look at people like Peter Drucker, who said it’s a manager’s job to be efficient and do something the right way, but it’s the executive’s job to be effective and do the right thing. Because if you’re doing the wrong thing, and you’re efficient, you’re worse. So the real question, first, is, what is the right thing to do? And that’s why David and I had such fierce resolve: We realized people needed something really special to inspire them into a new design framework. ▪ David R. Macaulay is the author of Integrated Design: Mithun, The Ecological Engineer, and the blog Green ArchiText, greenarchitext.com. eco-structure examined McDonough + Partners’ work at the Adam Joseph Lewis Center in Oberlin, Ohio, in the January/February 2011 Flashback column. To read more lessons learned from that project, as discussed by both William McDonough and David Orr, the Paul Sears distinguished professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, visit eco-structure.com. AN AIA MAGAZINE
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Cooper B-Line has introduced the Arista Monolithic Rooftop Mounting system for photovoltaic (PV) commercial rooftop applications. The system is compatible with standard strut, fittings, and other accessories, and is designed with limited components and preassembled ďŹ ttings. It adapts to portrait and landscape mounting, and can accommodate any PV size. The 100-percent recycled-rubber supports do not penetrate the roof. cooperblinesolar.com; 877.586.8607. Circle 100 ecostructure.hotims.com
MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 39
PRODUCTS
Illumra has introduced a solar-powered wireless door and window sensor. The battery-free sensor communicates using the EnOcean protocol to a variety of compatible actuator and controller products such as thermostats, relays, and room controllers, in addition to BACnet and Ethernet gateways for integration with energy-management systems. The sensor also includes onboard energy storage so it can operate in darkness for up to six days. It takes about a day to achieve a full charge. illumra.com; 801.349.1200. Circle 101 ecostructure.hotims.com
Doors & Windows CarbonCast High Performance Insulated Wall Panels from AltusGroup comprise two concrete wythes separated by rigid-foam-insulation boards connected by C-Grid carbon-fiber-grid shear trusses. Continuous insulation values rate R-37 or higher. The panels can be manufactured in thicknesses from 7 to 12 inches with widths up to 15 feet and heights of 50 feet or more. The panels also prevent water infiltration and can accommodate various finishes and articulations. altusprecast.com; 866.462.5887. Circle 102 ecostructure.hotims.com
CIRCLE NO. 19 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
AN AIA MAGAZINE
TAGLINE
Marvin Windows and Doors has introduced Tripane with Krypton, an option for the company’s windows that enables the windows to perform to a U-factor of 0.2 or lower. The option is available with a range of low-E coatings specified for climate zones. It also is Energy Star–rated and certified by the National Fenestration Rating Council. marvin.com; 888.537.7828. Circle 103 ecostructure.hotims.com
Lucite International has added EcoShade IR reflective continuous cast acrylic sheet to its line of LuciteLux products. The sheet reflects more than 75 percent of the infrared radiation in sunlight and reduces heat transmitted through windows and skylights in the summer while diminishing heat loss in the winter. The sheet transforms from a blue color to gold based on the angle of the view and surrounding light conditions. lucitelux.com; 800.458.2483. Circle 104 ecostructure.hotims.com
CIRCLE NO. 39 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
PRODUCTS
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The SmartPod Luminaire from Lumetric is a direct drive, fully digital, solid-state driver for HID lamps, and is networked to achieve additional energy savings through various controls such as motion sensors and daylighting controls. The electronic-drive HID luminaire maximizes light and quality degradation with soft-strike ignition. It delivers up to 104 lumens per watt and a color rendering index of up to 96. lumetric.com; 510.668.0600. Circle 106 ecostructure.hotims.com
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Lutron Electronic Co.’s Skylark Contour is available in four versions and seven colors, and is an update to its Skylark dimmer. The C-L preset dimmer can be used with dimmable CFLs and LEDs and with incandescent and halogen bulbs. The preset dimmer with eco-dim is for use with incandescent and halogen bulbs and saves up to 15 percent in energy, while the preset dimmer with eco-minder is for use with incandescent and halogen bulbs and features an LED that turns from red to green when 15 percent energy savings is achieved. lutron.com; 610.282.3800. Circle 107 ecostructure.hotims.com AN AIA MAGAZINE
Circle no. 64 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com
GREEN RED, WHITE, BLUE, AND
FIVE LAND PORTS OF ENTRY TO THE U.S. WELCOME VISITORS THROUGH BORDER CROSSINGS THAT ARE SECURE AND SUSTAINABLE. Text Katie Weeks
Each day, an average of 350,000 vehicles, 30,000 trucks, and 135,000 pedestrians pass through 163 government crossings along the borders of the United States. Building, operating, and maintaining each land port of entry (LPOE) falls under the auspices of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) within the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA). To deal with this traffic, the ports must have highly efficient and secure facilities that are open on a 24/7 basis, 365 days a year. Thanks to the GSA’s Design Excellence Program, they also should be well-designed and, in accordance with federal regulations, must meet a minimum of LEED Gold certification as of October 2010 (previously mandated at LEED Silver levels). As seen in the five LPOEs on the following pages, all of which are winners in the GSA’s 2010 Design Awards program, these gateways to the U.S. can be models of welcoming, highly functional, secure, and sustainable environments. Calais, Maine “The process of designing an LPOE is a process-driven exercise focusing on moving vehicles from one point to another,” says Robert Siegel, AIA, principal of New York–based Robert Siegel Architects. In addition, he says, “They’re very dynamic. CBP is tasked with responding to a variety of threats so the facilities have to be flexible in concept, design, and detail so that they can adapt without compromising security or diminishing the design intent of the building.” To design a new port in Calais, Siegel and project manager Eduardo Ramos, Intl. Assoc. AIA, hit the road, visiting 20 crossings along the northern border. Struck by the visual openness between Canada and the U.S., Siegel and Ramos focused on translating that into a new 106,000-square-foot port on a 50.3-acre site in an industrial district south of downtown Calais. One main challenge was to protect the city of Calais’ aquifer and potable-water supply, so the site was graded to slope away from the aquifer. Several bioswales and retention ponds also were installed to manage stormwater and pavement runoff. The swales treat and filter over 90 percent of runoff from impervious surfaces on site, and the project’s best-management practices are capable of removing 80 percent of the runoff ’s total suspended solids. The bioswales also serve as defensive barriers for the facility. Working with the site’s natural topography, the team used a cut-and-fill strategy to reduce the amount of material brought in, and excavated glacially deposited granite for reuse. Playing with massing, the new facility, which opened in November 2009, is bifurcated into two volumes for noncommercial and commercial traffic, the design of which draws inspiration from boulders found in the landscape. The structures are linked by a glazed passageway, and two courtyards provide areas of respite for officers where granite boulders collected from the site take on new life as a dramatic visual element. The spaces also provide the ventilation system with fresh air uncontaminated by the exhaust fumes from traffic in front of the building. “The courtyard [at the officers’ entryway] is one of the most dramatic spaces of the site, but it’s also one of the most peaceful,” Ramos says. From afar, the structure looks like stone, but its façade is actually an expanded aluminum-mesh screen composed of 10-foot-tall-by-40-inch-wide panels folded around an aluminum frame that was easier on the project budget, uses less materials, helps filter daylight, and provides unobstructed sight lines for CBP officers while obscuring views into the structure to maintain privacy. Other elements contributing to the facility’s LEED Gold certification include white cool roofs; underground parking for officers, which reduces the site’s paved area, and, in turn, its heat-island effect; low-VOC and recycled materials in the interiors; water-efficient fixtures in the bathrooms and kitchens that reduce potable-water consumption by more than 40 percent over conventional plumbing; and efficient lighting fixtures. According to Robert Siegel Architects’ LEED documentation, the port saves 17.9 percent total energy using the ASHRAE 90.1-2004 Appendix G methodology. Warroad, Minnesota Preexisting site conditions also played a critical role in the development of a new LPOE in Warroad, which was completed in February 2010. Located along the borders of Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada, the 13-acre site overlaps a natural wetland that tested the design team from Minneapolis-based Julie Snow Architects. The previous LPOE, built in 1962 to provide workspace for two CBP officers, occasionally flooded on the boggy site. An environmental assessment found a more stable plot of land three-quarters of a mile south of the original LPOE, and six miles north of the town of Warroad, that was on a slightly higher elevation. Still, concerns about potential settlement issues with the building’s foundation remained. “We brought in an additional 4 to 5 feet of soil to stabilize the existing saturated soils, and another 2 feet to elevate the building above the existing waterline,” says Matthew Kreilich, AIA, design principal at Julie Snow Architects. The new 45,000-square-foot port, which is aiming for LEED Gold certification, comprises three separate, low-slung volumes arranged in a “T” shape. Two buildings parallel the border’s east-west axis. “The low-slung formal quality of the building allows it to have a presence in this vast landscape,” Kreilich says. It also keeps sight lines open and helps control solar heat gain and glare. Because of the soggy soil conditions, each component is built on 60-foot-deep steel friction piles topped by a structural slab that supports the entire building. The plumbing system is suspended from 46 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
CALAIS, MAINE ROBERT SIEGEL ARCHITECTS
From a distance, the two volumes of the Calais Land Port of Entry (above) appear to be made of stone, referencing glacial deposits found on site and the regional tradition of using cairns, or manmade piles of stones, as landmarks. In actuality, the façades are constructed of an expanded aluminum-mesh screen folded around an aluminum façade. Boulders (left) excavated from the 50.3-acre site were repurposed as a dramatic visual element in one of two protected courtyards that connect the port’s two volumes. In comparison, visitors approaching the Land Port of Entry in Nogales, Ariz., (previous spread) are greeted with a red, white, and blue abstraction of the American flag.
Photos by Paul Warchol (this page); Rendering courtesy Jones Studio (previous spread) MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 47
the bottom of the building and can move independent of the building as the soil shifts. “There’s a lot of money below grade,” Kreilich says. Stormwater is managed with a three-part system. To the north, the team planted native grasses and wetland plantings to slow drainage; to the southwest, a pond with several bays slows filtration; and to the east, two bioswales retain excess water for 72 hours as it filters through plantings before discharging into the wetlands. When it came to energy, running natural gas to the new site would have been cost-prohibitive and building the new structure to operate on propane, as the previous port did, would have been a security hazard. The solution: a closed-loop geothermal system of 78 wells drilled to a depth of 410 feet. Paired with this is an in-floor radiant heating system in all work areas, and a backup generator and backup boilers that were installed to meet security requirements. In spaces such as the firing range and secondary inspection areas, which are closed spaces, a forced-air system controls temperatures and ventilation. So far, energy costs are calculated to be 39 percent below the firm’s baseline. The structure is clad in FSC-certified cedar planks, a reference to the area’s history of building with wood. They are treated with a low-VOC stain and a ventilated cavity system increases the cedar’s longevity and reduces moisture and mold buildup. On the exterior, the stain is a dark black, but as travelers move into the inspection areas and public spaces, the stain changes to a warmer heartwood color to create a more welcoming environment and a two-toned wayfinding element for drivers. Scrap wood from the exterior was used for the public spaces’ millwork and furnishings, including the reception desks, benches, and an interior wall. Massena, New York Taking an alternative approach to sense of place for a new port bridging Ontario, Canada, and New York state, New York–based Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects drew inspiration from the highways in and out of LPOEs. At the 57-acre, 84,000-square-foot, LEED Silver–certified Massena LPOE, completed in December 2009, yellow swaths of paint guide circulation through processing areas, and three translucent new structures: a 37,200-square-foot main administrative building; a 7,900-square-foot port facilities building housing infrastructural operations, management offices and equipment storage; and a 6,700-square-foot nonintrusive inspection building. The design team removed a preexisting traffic circle on the American side that was constructed in the 1950s; the circle forced drivers to burn unnecessary fuel, involved a large amount of asphalt, and disrupted 48 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
WARROAD, MINNESOTA JULIE SNOW ARCHITECTS
Unlike the large amount of stone and steel used at other ports, the Warroad Land Port of Entry capitalizes on the region’s history of working with wood. Two tones of FSCcertified cedar planks warm up both the exteriors and interiors. A low-VOC stain and ventilated cavity system increase the material’s longevity and reduce moisture and mold buildup. Scrap wood from the exteriors was used for interior millwork and furnishings.
Photos by Paul Crosby MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 49
the site’s natural ecosystem. The team then re-sloped the site to mitigate the existing wetlands. In all, the project remediated 4.7 acres of low-quality wetlands and added an additional 9.4 acres of mitigated and constructed stormwater wetlands with drought-resistant plantings. Removing the circle also reduced the amount of asphalt, and partner Laurie Hawkinson, AIA, and senior associate Sean A. Gallagher say that reduction in paving, combined with tight project phasing and other small initiatives, contributed to $1 million in cost savings. In all, the project came in $4 million under budget and finished three months ahead of schedule. “These ports require a lot of asphalt. We tried to minimize the impact on the ground while still making the traffic flow work,” Hawkinson says. “It’s a delicate balance.” The new structures and roads were integrated into the traffic circle’s footprint to keep the amount of developed land low, and a preexisting east-to-west high-voltage power line was moved to the north to give the team more flexibility in circulation and building orientation. The designers sought to instill a sense of openness while respecting CBP’s security concerns and budget limitations. Rather than employing full ballistic glazing on three all-glass structures, which would have been costly, they opted for a combination of ballistic glazing, architectural concrete, steel plate, and a polycarbonate skin that wraps the buildings to create shadow-box structures. During the day, the skin adds thermal protection against wind and filters daylight to interior areas without compromising views out or officers’ privacy; at night it transforms the structures into glowing beacons. “We wanted to get as much light into the facilities as possible. While they’d prefer to not have windows, we argued that we could reduce their operational costs by bringing in light. We had to prove the polycarbonate material was safe and could be used to lighten up the structures so they perform like a bunker but don’t look like one,” Gallagher says. Another strategy turns two canopies that cover two inspection plazas into active lighting elements. Together, the plaza booths and canopies total 24,500 square feet. CBP requirements mandate a lighting level of 110 footcandles underneath the canopies, but instead of lighting them in a more conventional manner, the designers cantilevered them from a center column. The undersides are purposefully uncluttered so that they can serve as reflective lighting surfaces. “It’s a very even, high-quality light,” Hawkinson says. “It’s a design innovation to solve pragmatic needs.” Also addressing energy use are passive design strategies such as double-cavity walls, material heat sinks, and high-albedo roofing. Thirty-five percent of the port’s electricity is now purchased from alternative-energy operators generating wind and hydroelectric power, and the design team has installed meters throughout the facility to monitor operations. Nogales, Arizona Similar to the LPOE in Massena, managing natural light is a main focus at the 350,000-gross-square-foot Mariposa LPOE in Nogales. Designed by Phoenix-based Jones Studio, the overhaul of the state’s largest port—a multiphase project aiming for completion in 2014— comprises 28 buildings on 53 acres. The facility as a whole is aiming for LEED Platinum certification. The port’s southwestern locale lends itself to daylit spaces and outdoor circulation. On many of the buildings, glazed glass and shading structures filter sunlight while insulated concrete walls that require low to zero maintenance and insulated roofs help regulate interior temperatures. Also providing shade on the south-facing entry to the primary inspection areas are 15-foot-tall perforated steel panels ranging in width from 7 to 10 feet. Powdercoated in red, white, and blue, the panels are an abstracted American flag and guide drivers to the appropriate lanes. They also serve a second purpose: Attached to trusses underneath the inspection canopies, they obscure a catwalk from which CBP officers patrol the area 17 feet above the ground. “We spent a great deal of time with the main canopies to make them a memorable experience in the way they’re colored, how they’re presented, how they filter sunlight and provide shade, and how skylights can let light come down while lighting the colors,” says Brian Farling, project architect at Jones Studio. Harnessing solar power has been more complicated. “CBP is not fond of ground-mounted photovoltaics because it can obstruct sight lines, and [the CBP is also] not fond of putting a lot of penetrations into the buildings’ roofs, because of security concerns,” says Melissa Farling, AIA, project manager at Jones Studio. Working with an eye to these concerns, the project will feature two photovoltaic installations that will produce a combined 1MW of power. While the total number of panels is still to be determined, they will be split so that 75 percent of them will be installed on a canopy covering parking spaces and the remaining 25 percent will be on top of the main commercial dock. The panels will be built into the canopy and building frame to eliminate rooftop penetrations, and the power they produce will be fed back in to the grid, rather than stored in batteries on site. Focusing on baseline estimates calculated through Energy Star Target Finder, the team is aiming for a 60 percent reduction in overall energy use. Playing off its desert locale, the site references the concept of an oasis with the buildings oriented around a center axis. To the east of the center is a 1,000-foot-long building and to the west is an 800-footlong building. In the middle is a lush garden of native plants. From there, the remaining structures on site are oriented to provide a secure perimeter. 50 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
MASSENA, NEW YORK SMITH-MILLER + HAWKINSON ARCHITECTS
The passenger canopy of the Massena Land Port of Entry (above) is purposely clean and free of lighting or security elements. By keeping the surface unobstructed, it can then be used as a lighting element itself, reflecting daylight from below. To marry open sight lines with a degree of privacy on each of the site’s three buildings, the design team chose a combination of ballistic glazing, architectural concrete, steel plates, and a polycarbonate skin that creates shadow-box structures (left).
Photos by Michael Moran MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 51
NOGALES, ARIZONA JONES STUDIO
52 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
The concept of an oasis also hinges on the presence of water. Outside of the main garden, the site features an extensive landscaping plan to address this. Native species that were planted are receptive to the desert climate and all of the roofs harvest rainwater. In the outlying buildings, water is collected and reused in the surrounding gardens. On the roofs of the two main interior buildings and the inspection canopies, drainage channels collect water and send it to an underground storage tank that can store up to 1 million gallons. From there, the water is redirected to irrigation pumps and a small fountain in one of the interiors. A solar hot-water system services all of the restrooms. Above all other goals, however, efficiency remained priority number one. “Upgrading this facility cuts down on the massive amount of exhaust fumes from trucks waiting to be processed. The main goal is to process vehicles faster and keep them moving so that the amount of time spent waiting goes from hours to minutes,” Brian Farling says. “One of the major challenges was balancing the priorities of CBP and the people that work there with the aspirations of the GSA and its Design Excellence Program. To be frank, the people working there don’t care how sustainable we are. Their priority lies in doing their job, staying safe, and protecting everyone that comes through the port,” he says. “The biggest challenge was balancing security with the agenda of making a sustainable facility.” Van Buren, Maine Like the completed facilities receiving GSA 2010 Design Awards, water factors heavily in the design of the LPOE in Van Buren, a project currently on the boards for Julie Snow Architects. The 43,500-square-foot facility, which is scheduled to start construction this spring, will replace a 40-year-old port damaged in a 2008 flood of the St. John River. The new facility will sit along the river’s bluff line, 20 feet above the flood plain. To address water runoff into the river, the design team manipulated the 2,000-foot-long waterfront property to employ a series of low mounts that direct water to a stone-lined swale, underground sedimentation chamber, and retention pond. “We allowed the water condition to become a landscape feature,” says Matthew Kreilich, AIA, design principal at Julie Snow Architects. “It’s a design opportunity. The swales and mounds create a texture and animate the landscape as you move through it while also filtering and directing water. And they provide security in that approaching vehicles can’t run off the road as they head into the site.” The length of the narrow site, sandwiched between the town of Van Buren and the bluff, drove the building’s “Z” form, which will provide the necessary hinge points for traffic flow and will address solar issues such as heat gain. “The biggest challenge was the location of the site, which runs parallel to Main Street in Van Buren,” Kreilich notes. “There was a lot of sensitivity paid to how building here would affect
The Mariposa Land Port of Entry won specific recognition from the GSA for its communications and wayfinding program. The red, white, and blue color scheme of the 15-foot-tall south-facing steel panels on the exterior is an abstraction of the American flag. Red signifies passengervehicle areas (left) and continues in the interior processing spaces (above); Blue signifies commercial-traffic processing spaces. White splits the two areas on the southern approach and represents outbound traffic on the north.
Renderings courtesy Jones Studio MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 53
VAN BUREN, MAINE JULIE SNOW ARCHITECTS
For the Van Buren Land Port of Entry, seen from the Canadian exit at right, Julie Snow Architects designed a Z-shaped port to fit a tight, narrow site. Skylights installed in the canopy of the initial inspection areas (above) will filter daylight, while a silk screen with a forest camouflage pattern on the glass buildings will control glare and filter light for the enclosed areas.
Renderings courtesy Julie Snow Architects 54 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
the heart of downtown. … There’s a public park just below the port that residents needed to have access to and we were sensitive to how the port would change traffic flow into town.” Playing with the landscape in a different way, the architects designed a skin of aluminum and glass with a forest-camouflage-pattern silk screen that will provide privacy and glare control. Combined with repeating columns and mullions, the structure will mimic trees in a forest while maintaining sight lines and providing maximum surveillance opportunities. When it comes to energy, like Warroad, Van Buren will incorporate a geothermal system combined with radiant heating. The final number and total depth of the wells is yet to be determined. Unlike Warroad, however, plans also include solar hot-water heaters and biodiesel boilers. “What’s interesting about Van Buren is there’s a lot of biofuel being produced in the region,” Kreilich says. “We’re anticipating how this building can become more sustainable in the future.” It is estimated that the new port will reduce its energy use by 48 percent over comparable buildings. ▪ To read Q&As with the GSA and CBP on the GSA Design Awards program and these projects, and to see extended slide shows of each port, visit eco-structure.com.
MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 55
Text Lydia Lee Photos Iwan Baan
HALLOWED GROUND
MARCH/APRIL 2011 ECO-STRUCTURE 57
BELZBERG ARCHITECTS INTEGRATES LESSONS OF THE PAST WITH HOPES FOR THE FUTURE.
Pan Pacific Park
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LAMH
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For architect Hagy Belzberg, FAIA, principal of Belzberg Architects in Santa Monica, Calif., putting the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMH) underground made perfect sense. “We were building within a park, so we had a responsibility to maintain public open space,” he says. “It also sets up a powerful metaphor. As visitors progress through the museum, they learn the stories about what was happening [in eastern Europe] in the 1930s while people were literally having picnics yards away.” The building uses the power of architecture to tell a compelling story—about the Holocaust, but also about how even the edgiest of designs can be sustainably built and operated. The museum, which opened in October, is anticipated to receive LEED Gold certification. A privately funded project with a budget of $15 million, LAMH is at the northwest corner of Pan Pacific Park in central Los Angeles. The park flows up and over the building, which is covered with a 15,000-squarefoot green roof planted with grasses such as blue grama and esparto that insulates the building, provides substantial thermal mass, mitigates the urban-heat-island effect, and minimizes stormwater runoff. The museum is entered by a drop-off area on the corner of the park, and visitors exit via a 110-foot-long ramp that gradually ascends back to the park. From the time Belzberg began working on the museum design seven years ago, it was always conceived as an underground structure. “I think the thing that helped me win the commission was the idea of not sticking a building on the park, but to integrate the two,” he says. Inside, an open gallery is organized into 10 exhibit areas, populated by simple black display cases that tell the story of the Holocaust primarily through images and videos. Instead of the expected straight planes, the ceiling curves upward. And the walls have sculptural cutouts, architectural abstractions of the curving park pathways. From the lobby, visitors receive an introduction to prewar communities in “The World That Was.” As they move through the exhibits, which total 8,200 square feet, the path slopes downwards and the ceiling gets lower, so that the exhibits that cover the ghettos and concentration camps are also the darkest. The area below the exit ramp doubles as a display case for personal artifacts from Auschwitz. “One of the strengths of Hagy’s architecture is that it provides an aesthetic entrée into the information, but avoids Jewish iconography that veers towards kitsch,” says E. Randol Schoenberg, the president of the museum’s board. “We wanted the museum to be flexible enough to be meaningful and accessible to people who have a little information, as well as those who have a lot of information.” At 32,000 square feet, LAMH is Belzberg Architects’ largest built project. While preoccupied by what looks cool in the digital age—e.g., intricate patterns and unorthodox shapes—the firm has also readily incorporated an emphasis on sustainability into its design sensibilities. Its own Santa Monica offices, completed in 2009, also received LEED Gold certification. The key green aspect of LAMH is that nearly the entire building is below grade, enabling it to be naturally cooled by the earth and the area’s high water table during L.A.’s scorching summers. The green roof will also do its part to keep the temperature cool. A conservative calculation of its R-value is 33, but factoring in the effects of the thermal mass of the soil and the plants when mature, the effective R-value will likely be closer to 40 (which is more than 50 percent better than what is required for the region). With a high-efficiency HVAC system that incorporates 100 percent air-side economizers, along with energyefficient lighting, the building is estimated to use 40 percent less energy than a comparable building. “Most green buildings have a lot of light and air and windows, but we were able to reach a lot of the LEED efficiency values even without those elements,” says Lauren Zuzack, a design team member for the project for Belzberg Architects. Natural lighting is a difficult thing to incorporate in museums, but Belzberg was able to introduce it into the center of the building using the ramp, which has frosted glass walls. Going down the LEED checklist, the firm received credit for recycled materials and used recycled steel rebar and up to 30 percent flyash in the concrete. Because flyash darkens concrete, less was used in the highly visible portions of the building, such as the façade, while more was used in the parking garage. The firm also installed six LED solar light poles from Inovus Solar. Wrapped with films of solar panels and equipped with motion sensors, the poles are self-sustaining and get brighter as people approach, with each pole using 39 watts of power and outputting 2,880 lumens. “Every project we’re doing now has a sustainable minimum of LEED Silver,” Belzberg says. “It’s our culture; it’s what the office is all about. I think that’s our opportunity—making design and sustainability reliant on each other.” With the assistance of Belzberg Architects, the museum is planning to offer special tours that specifically go over the green features of the building. Meanwhile, park-goers who come across the curious structure with grasses spilling over the roof—and more often than not are inspired to walk up it for a better view of the surrounding landscape —are already seeing how a building can indeed be green. ▪ Lydia Lee writes about sustainability and architecture from Menlo Park, Calif. To see a slide show of images of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, visit eco-structure.com.
58 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, which is anticipating LEED Gold certiďŹ cation, is nestled in the northwest corner of a public park, with the majority of the structure hidden under a 15,000-square-foot green roof. Visitors begin their journey through the museum via a drop-off area adjacent to the park (previous spread), and after progressing through the underground exhibits, they exit via a 110-foot-long ramp that climbs back to park level, where an existing monument of black pillars (seen in the rear left corner above) is located.
For the sculptural walls inside the museum, Belzberg Architects used shotcrete, which was sprayed at high volume into the formwork so that it would get into all the cracks and crevices. The aesthetic of ďŹ lleted corners and angles originated from the landscape outside and its curving pathways. Progressing through the 10 exhibit spaces, lighting becomes scarcer and the ceilings lower, culminating in an exhibit on concentration camps that is lit almost entirely by video monitors. From there, the museum opens back up as visitors ascend back to the park.
60 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
LAYERS OF EVOLUTION
A CANADIAN REDEVELOPMENT CONNECTS HISTORY AND ECOLOGY. Text KJ Fields Photos Michael Leckman/Diamond and Schmitt Architects
Set amid Toronto’s 26,000-acre ravine system, the adaptive reuse of a 120-year-old brick factory is creating new community roots with engaging programs in an inspiring locale. Sixteen warehouse buildings that were boarded up for several decades now buzz with activity. Crates filled with organic salad greens, loaves of fresh bread, and artisanal cheeses draw thousands to a year-round Saturday-morning farmers’ market. In an adjacent building during colder months, ice skaters circle a manufactured ice rink under open rafters that allow snow to drift down from above. Chef-led cooking classes, and children’s and community gardens entice city dwellers to get their hands dirty. This is Evergreen Brick Works. “Reenvisioning this site was a magical opportunity,” says Geoff Cape, executive director of Evergreen, a Toronto-based nonprofit focused on ecological restoration, especially in urban centers. “We wanted to establish active relationships with nature in the urban environment and to develop programs and architecture that express the future of city building.” The ongoing renovation of the 12-acre historic site commingles Toronto’s history and future. From 1889 to 1984, the Don Valley Brick Works supplied brick for commercial and residential construction across North America before the factory was shut down. In 1989, the City of Toronto expropriated the abandoned factory as a heritage site. While part of the site was transformed into a park and nature area in the mid 1990s, the reuse of the historic buildings constructed from the early 1900s to the 1950s are Evergreen’s focus. Toronto-based firms Diamond and Schmitt Architects, du Toit Allsopp Hillier, and Montreal-based Claude Cormier Landscape Architects collaborated on Evergreen Brick Works’ master plan. “It was a complicated project as we sought to restore parts of the site, keep the rough industrial aesthetic and reinvent certain spaces for modern functions,” explains Donald Schmitt, AIA, principal at Diamond and Schmitt. The buildings’ characteristics helped define their use. For example, instead of removing three 365-footlong kilns from one warehouse to create an indoor parking garage, the project team retained the kilns and considered different options. The distinctive space can be anything from a large-scale contemporary art gallery to a private-event space, with an indoor climbing wall at one end. The Young Welcome Centre, located in one of the historic structures, now houses the farmers’ market during winter months and is the orientation hub for those exploring the site. Here, the architects preserved a massive brick press and an elevated foreman’s shed, two original features that recall the warehouse’s origins. Throughout the site, decades of graffiti were left intact and two artists were commissioned to add new graffiti to create a mix of new and old that represents the different layers of history present on site. Evergreen also wanted to show that urban building can leverage passive strategies and progressive technologies for minimal environmental impact. The masonry walls of the Welcome Centre remain uninsulated to expose the historic brick, while the space is heated by hydronic radiant flooring installed in the concrete floor. In the future, waste heat from the ice rink will be captured for use in the event spaces and will warm a café slated to open this spring. Diamond and Schmitt designed the only new building on site: the five-story, 54,000-square-foot Centre for Green Cities, which is on track to receive LEED Platinum certification. The facility comprises offices, multipurpose rooms, and the existing space housing the Young Welcome Centre. The new components span the historic warehouse on an independent steel structure. A modern staircase weaves up into the new space, where industrial materials and detailing complement the historic palette below. The building is extremely well-insulated, achieving values of R-32 in the walls and R-50 in the roof, which helped reduce the energy loads of the new building. In cooler temperatures, triple-glazed energyefficient windows set in insulated fiberglass window frames transmit less cold to the interior. Operable windows and thermal chimneys in the center of the building provide natural ventilation. Fifteen 5,000-gallon above-grade cisterns capture rainwater from the site’s roofs for use in irrigation and the public restrooms. Rainwater stored at two of the cisterns at the center also is used for make-up water for the cooling tower during summer months. The Centre for Green Cities remains a work in progress. On its top, 3,000 square feet of solar thermal panels will be installed to help provide heating and cooling. During the summer, the heat from the thermal panels will run the building’s absorption chiller, and cool air will be delivered to the upper-floor offices and multipurpose rooms through raised access flooring and into ground-floor event spaces via ceiling diffusers. A high-efficiency biomass boiler fueled by wood waste from local manufacturing will also generate energy. The solar panels and boiler will heat fluid that runs through tubing in the Welcome Centre’s radiant floor and into coiled fluid radiators on the upper stories. The timing of the addition of these various elements is dependent on funding. The cogeneration system will offer great environmental benefits. “Energy models predict that the new center will consume 57 percent less energy and emit 51 percent fewer carbon emissions than a comparable building built to ASHRAE 90.1 standards,” Schmitt says. “The creative balance of sustainability and history brought a genuine sense of meaning to the place,” Cape notes, “and integrating progressive concepts in a historic context helps ground the ideas and make them seem more plausible.” ▪ KJ Fields writes about sustainability and architecture from Portland, Ore. To see an extended slide show of Evergreen Brick Works, visit eco-structure.com. 64 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
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3
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Structures that started out in the 1880s as the Don Valley Brick Works factory are now home to community events such as farmers’ markets, cooking classes and, in colder months, ice skating. Working with the historic buildings on site, Diamond and Schmitt Architects, du Toit Allsopp Hillier, and Claude Cornier Landscape Architects worked with the original warehouse spaces to create multipurpose areas (previous spread). Reminders of the site’s history are mixed with modern updates (1). The site’s only new building, the Centre for Green Cities (2) is perched on top of the an old warehouse that now houses the Young Welcome Centre (3), which holds the public events mentioned above. Inside, the architects left much of the original materials and detailing, including graffiti, exposed (4) and complemented the industrial aesthetic with a palette of brick and steel.
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MARIPOSA LAND PORT OF ENTRY, NOGALES, ARIZ. GREEN TEAM Architect, interior designer: Jones Studio, jonesstudioinc.com Client: U. S. General Services Administration, gsa.gov Civil engineer: Stantec, stantec.com Construction manager: Heery International, www.heery.com Cost estimator: Construction Cost Management Consultancy Electrical engineer: Woodward Engineering, woodward-engineering.com Fire protection: EJ Engineering Group, ejengineering.com General contractor: Hensel Phelps Construction Co., henselphelps.com Geotechnical engineer: Western Technologies, wt-us.com Landscape architect: Chris Winters & Associates LEED and life-cycle-performance consultant: Green Ideas Lighting designer: Woodward Engineering Mechanical and plumbing engineer: Associated Mechanical Engineers, am-engineers.com Project specifications: Littler Associates Consulting Structural engineer: Bakkum Noelke Consulting Structural Engineers, bakkumnoelke.com
U.S. LAND PORT OF ENTRY, CALAIS, MAINE GREEN TEAM Architect, interior designer: Robert Siegel Architects, robertsiegelarchitects.com Client: U.S. General Services Administration Civil engineer, electrical engineer, lighting designer, mechanical engineer, structural engineer: Arup, arup.com Construction manager: Coast and Harbor Associates, coastandharbor.com Façade consultant: Front, frontinc.com General contractor: J&J Contractors, www.jjcontractor.com Landscape architect: Sasaki Associates, sasaki.com
U.S. LAND PORT OF ENTRY, MASSENA, N.Y. GREEN TEAM Client: U.S. General Services Administration Architect, interior designer, project manager: Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects, smharch.com Civil, electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and structural engineers, and LEED consultant: Arup Construction manager: Gilbane, gilbaneco.com Curtainwall design consultant: Evans Heintges Architects, eharch.com Environmental engineer: Barton & Loguidice,
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U.S. LAND PORT OF ENTRY, VAN BUREN, MAINE GREEN TEAM Architect, interior designer: Julie Snow Architects, juliesnowarchitects.com Client: U.S. General Services Administration Architectural technology: Building Solutions Civil engineer: Jacobs Engineering Group, jacobs.com Construction manager, general contractor: KrausAnderson, krausanderson.com Cost estimating: Faithful+Gould, fgould.com Electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, lighting designer: Sebesta Blomberg, sebesta.com Fire protection: Futrell Fire Consult & Design, ffcdi.com Geotechnical engineer: Key Engineering Group, keyengineering.com Landscape architect: Coen+Partners, coenpartners.com
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U.S. LAND PORT OF ENTRY, WARROAD, MAINE GREEN TEAM Architect, interior designer: Julie Snow Architects Client: U.S. General Services Administration Civil engineer: Jacobs Engineering Group Construction manager, general contractor: Kraus-Anderson Electrical engineer, lighting designer, mechanical engineer: Sebesta Blomberg Geotechnical engineer: Key Engineering Group Landscape architect: Coen+Partners Structural engineer: Meyer Borgman Johnson
LOS ANGELES MUSEUM OF THE HOLOCAUST GREEN TEAM Architect: Belzberg Architects, belzbergarchitects.com Client: Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, lamoth.org Electrical consultant: A&F Consulting Engineers,
groupaf.co.uk Environmental engineer: Enviropro, enviropro.com General contractor: Winters Schram Associates, winters-schram.com Mechanical consultant: John Dorius & Associates Methane engineer: Carlin Environmental Consulting, carlinenvironmental.com Plumbing consultant: Tom Nasrollahi & Associates Soils engineer: Irvine Geotechnical, irvinegeotech.com Structural consultant: William Koh & Associates, williamkohassociates.com
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EVERGREEN BRICK WORKS, CENTRE FOR GREEN CITIES GREEN TEAM Architect: Diamond and Schmitt Architects, dsai.ca Client, owner: Evergreen, evergreen.ca Civil engineer: AECOM, aecom.com Construction manager: Eastern Construction, easternconstruction.com Electrical engineer, lighting designer, mechanical engineer: Stantec Geotechnical engineer: Alston Associates, alston.ca Landscape architect: Du Toit Allsopp Hillier, dtah.com LEED consultant, structural engineer: Halsall Associates, halsall.com
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ECOCENTRIC
Waste Not Text Laurie Grant Rendering Bjarke Ingels Group
A DANISH WASTE-TO-ENERGY PLANT DOUBLES AS A DOWNHILL SKI SLOPE.
72 ECO-STRUCTURE.COM
One architecture firm has a unique idea to breathe fresh air into a waste-to-energy plant on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark. Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) envisions that the plant, Amagerforbraending, will be more than a large, boxy structure; by taking on the unlikely form of a ski hill, the plant will also serve as a recreation and travel destination. The new plant will replace the current 40-yearold waste-to-energy plant and, with a budget of 3.5 billion DKK ($650 million), will be among the largest environmental initiatives in Denmark’s history. Slated for completion in 2016, the facility will have a roof that will be transformed into a 333,681-square-foot ski area with slopes for skiers of varying levels. Under BIG’s design, one end of the building will be lifted to integrate the incinerator’s smokestack into the facility’s overall architecture, while the opposite end will sit closer to the ground to minimize the building’s volume. The slope from top to bottom will feature almost a mile of ski runs, plus a terrain park. Both indoor and outdoor alpine ski resorts may have a reputation for being energy intensive, but BIG’s proposal is ecological and the slope will be constructed using a recycled synthetic granular material. Skiers will access the slope via an elevator opposite the smokestack that will have a glass wall to grant them views into the plant on their way to a 328-foot-tall platform. That platform will stand as one of the tallest points in Copenhagen.
The smokestack will be engineered to remind Danes of their carbon footprint. Though smokestacks, with their constant emissions, generally are regarded as a symbol of the past, this particular one vows to symbolize the future. It will puff smoke rings 98 feet in diameter whenever 1 ton of fossil carbon dioxide is released, serving more as a reminder of environmental impact than a celebration of releasing CO2 . A brainchild of Berlinbased art studio realities:united, the smoke rings will form through the condensation of water in the flue gases. At night, heat tracking will be used to position laser light on the smoke rings. Perhaps one of Amagerforbraending’s most distinguishing characteristics is that the façade will be attractive and fit the building. The entire structure will be wrapped in a vertical façade formed by planter modules stacked like bricks. With its white topping, the facility will resemble a mountain from afar. The surrounding area will be sculpted by the Berlin-based firms Topotek 1 and Man Made Land to form a park to offer activities such as cable skiing, go-karting, sailing, and rock climbing. A field of hills mimicking a mogul trail (as seen in the foreground above) will lie on the western border, and a path system through the park will connect the site with the neighboring residential area to integrate Amagerforbraending into the community. ▪ View more renderings at eco-structure.com. AN AIA MAGAZINE
Circle no. 43 or http://ecostructure.hotims.com